Over 650 snow records set in USA this week – another wonky surface station located

UPDATE : The NWS responds about the station issue, see below. – Anthony

Almost 60% of the contiguous USA covered in snow.

While pundits spin attempts at linking snowfall in the Northeast USA to AGW, much like they do in the summer during heat waves, we find that Nature is just taunting them with snow as far south as the Mexican border in Arizona. And there is more to come, in the next week, we may see snow into Florida. During the last week, 652 new snow records were set in the CONUS as seen in the map below:

The record furthest south, in Paradise, AZ, of 6.3 inches snowfall, beat the old 2 inch record going all the way back to 1896. Paradise, AZ is just 40 miles from the Mexican border. You can see all the snow records yourself here.

And according to the NOAA NOHRSC, 57.5% of the CONUS has snow cover.

I also had a look at temperature records this past week, where there were 92 new record low temperatures all the way into Florida, and only 20 new high temperature records set:

One record in particular, at Jal, NM piqued my interest, because it was in the middle of a bunch of record low temperatures. Not only that, it beat the old record high in 1953 by quite a margin, besting it by 7 degrees:

There are no new high temperature records anywhere close to this station, and it stands out like a sore thumb.The nearest official hourly reporting station in Wink, TX just 26 miles away, shows a high of only 62 on Friday February, 22nd according to this data from Weather Underground sourced from NWS:

Source: http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KINK/2013/2/22/DailyHistory.html

Another station to the North, Hobbs, NM, 23 miles to the North, another official NOAA airport station, also shows no new record high on that day:

Source: http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KHOB/2013/2/22/DailyHistory.html

The weather in the area that day was sunny, mild, breezy, and dry:

Source: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/maf/version.php?site=MAF&issuedby=MAF&state=&product=RWR&format=CI&db=1&version=2013-02-23+00%3A02%3A12&go=Select

I had a strong hunch that this station in Jal, NM may have poor siting which contributed to the new record anomalously warm high on Friday, it turns out my hunch was correct.

According the NCDC metadata, the Jal station is a Class A station, meaning it is part of the climate monitoring network. While not part of the USHCN, it does serve as a station used for infill and pairwise comparisons when trying to homogenize the surface temperature record. The NCDC location metadata was a red flag to me: JAL POLICE DEPARTMENT WITHIN AND 2 MILES SE OF POSTOFFICE AT JAL NM

With just a little research, I was able to locate a photo of the station, courtesy of a survey page from New Mexico State University. The photo showed yet another parking lot weather station:

In the photo above (which I have annotated) the Standard Rain Gauge is clearly visible and what looks like the MMTS temperature sensor shelter on a pole is in the distance near the front of the building. Such placements are typical, they try to get over grass where they can trench a cable back to a window or a wall opening to the display in the office.

A further check of metadata revealed the station is located at 32.1103 -103.1872, within the town according to NCDC metadata, and this Google Earth image:

While that lat/lon puts the station in the parking lot, I note that typically most GPS readings in NCDC’s metadata are good to only about 100 feet. And sure enough, right where I suspected it was, was the telltale shadow of the MMTS shelter. Some annotation was added to the Google Earth image to help you visualize what I know from years of experience doing aerial station surveys.

The photo above has an imaging date of 2/7/2011, seen in lower left – winter time, just slightly over a year ago. Click the image to enlarge it for a closer view.

So to summarize:

1. We have a new record high that is anomalously warm, 96 degrees F. No official nearby stations set any comparable high temperatures or  new temperature records in the same time frame. It appears all stations experienced similar warm dry breezy weather that day.

2. We have a NOAA temperature sensor a mere 7 feet from the sidewalk and 16 feet from a  large brick building (according to the ruler function in Google Earth and the photo from the NM State survey page).

3. We have a massive parking lot beyond that, and a major road just beyond the parking lot, plus a semicircular drive. Essentially the temperature sensor is surrounded with heat sinks.

4. We have a low albedo surface, dry brown grass, under the temperature sensor in February as evident in the Google Earth photo from a year ago, there’s no reason to suspect this year would be any different.

5. The station is located within the UHI bubble of the town.

So given the sunny dry weather with a lack of nearby comparable temperatures or new records, heat sinks all around, the parking lot, the building, the low albedo of dry grass under the sensor, it seems entirely likely to me that this is a false high temperature record.

I have sent a note to NWS in Midland Odessa to have them investigate.

Update: The original photo of Snow on cacti provided by Scrape TV stated on the Scrape TV article it was from 2013. Alert reader J Philip Peterson pointed out the photo they used was from 2007. I’ve updated the photo at the head of the story for accuracy. – Anthony

UPDATE2: 2/25/13 7AM PST Here is what the NWS Midland says in an email to me: